


Tachycardia (the My Own Soul's Warning Remix)

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Family Dinner, First Dates, Fluff and Humor, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:02:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27461641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Aaron was not expecting Neil to invite someone else to family dinner.  He most definitely was not expecting Neil to invite his long-term crush - and possible soulmate.  Or, a Soulmate AU in which people hear what music their soulmate is listening to.
Relationships: Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 15
Kudos: 229
Collections: AFTG Remix 2020





	Tachycardia (the My Own Soul's Warning Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdzeword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Tachycardia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26227711) by [nerdzeword](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdzeword/pseuds/nerdzeword). 



> Many thanks to my beta for helping flesh out the soulmate idea and giving it a read-through at the end! And a thousand thanks to Leahelisabeth and gluupor for modding this event, and to nerdzeword for giving me such a cute story to work with.

“What the fuck are you humming?”

Aaron glanced up from his tablet where he was reviewing his patient’s latest scans. “Why are you here? Again?”

Andrew leaned against the doctor’s station with his arms crossed. “I’m here to ask you why you are humming Taylor fucking Swift while doing charts.”

Aaron blinked at him. Was that what that was? He’d had it in his head all week, with its nostalgic lyrics and vaguely melancholy melody. Attempts to counteract it by blasting his own playlist had merely resulted in the worst possible mashup of music echoing in his brain and a headache that made a mockery of all his med-school stress migraines. “Why do _you_ know that was Taylor Swift?”

Andrew waved a dismissive hand. “I’m gay. It’s part of the requirements for my recertification.”

“I thought that was Lady Gaga.”

“Gaga was last year. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Fuck off. Neil’s not even up here, go extract him from wherever he’s wreaking havoc and leave me alone.”

“Gasp,” Andrew said with no inflection. “Is that how you talk to your only brother?”

“Thank God or whoever’s in charge of this shit that I’ve only got one.”

“My my. I’m starting to think maybe you don’t like me.” Andrew reached over the counter to snag a handful of M&Ms out of the bowl that one of the other surgeons kept stocked.

“Aren’t we having dinner at your place in, like, an hour?” Aaron asked mildly, shoving at Andrew’s shoulder.

“Do you honestly think you’ll be done in an hour?”

Aaron started to answer in the affirmative, then sighed. “Fine. Two.”

Andrew saluted him with a middle finger as he headed towards the elevators. “Oh. Forgot to tell you.” Aaron snorted at that. “Neil invited what’s-her-name. That cardiologist.”

“Who, Katelyn?” Aaron tried to say, but he tripped over his tongue and it came out garbled as, “Hookalyn?”

Andrew merely raised an amused eyebrow at him as the elevator doors slid shut.

* * *

The songs had started the better part of a decade ago, back in undergrad. At the time he had rejected the potential implication, dismissing it as nothing more than a consequence of dorm living, being surrounded by a collection of assholes with questionable music taste. It seemed as genetically impossible that he could have a soulmate as that he would suddenly grow another foot. Betsy Dobson had gently suggested that he may be setting unhealthy limitations on himself in one of his sessions with Andrew.

He had laughed in her face. The fact that he ended up knowing as much pop music as organic chemistry by the end of the year meant nothing.

And so it continued. He rarely learned the names or artists, but he could sing every lyric about pumped up kicks or someone maybe calling or putting a ring on it. Somewhere around the time that he introduced Andrew to Neil, and they all learned where Andrew’s random and profound knowledge of British rock actually came from, Aaron realized that perhaps Betsy was right.

The thing was, it didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter if Aaron had some random soulmate who was obsessed with pop music. Because sometime around sophomore year of undergrad, just as he was becoming intimately familiar with both microbiology and a fire starting in a heart, he was lab partners with Katelyn for a whole semester.

A whole brilliant, brilliant semester.

They had continued to study together even after that semester was done. Somehow, Katelyn hadn’t gone to Harvard or Yale or Johns Hopkins for med school as she undoubtedly deserved. She had stayed at PSU, poking around in anatomy lab a table over from Aaron and studying physiology at one a.m. in the library with a water bottle filled with some disgusting energy drink at her elbow. And then after their residencies, by a miracle Aaron didn’t want to examine too closely, she had joined on at Columbia East as an attending cardiologist, just a floor below him.

Now, courtesy of Neil fucking Josten, she was on her way to eat dinner at his brother’s house, in all her perfect, nerdy glory. Right after she had smiled at him. Maybe not _right_ after; it had been a week ago. And maybe it wasn’t really at him; for all Aaron knew there had been a small child behind him or something, but still. He had been in the general vicinity of a Katelyn smile.

At least for once he didn’t have any song blaring through his head. He hit play on his phone and turned up the car stereo, trying not to think about the fact that he was still in his sweat-stained scrubs and smelled like the weird changing room soap. After all, Katelyn probably did too.

* * *

Katelyn did not. Though fatigue pulled at her eyes, she had managed to change into normal person clothes and her hair was a glorious riot and she smelled like something sweet and warm. Not that he should be smelling her. He gave his nose a stern warning and swiped the whisky off the table.

“Hi, Aaron,” she said, and there it was again, that smile, and he was one hundred percent sure there were no hidden babies anywhere around she could be smiling at. “I didn’t know you’d be here!”

“Yeah, well, it’s Andrew’s turn to host weekly dinner,” he said, and Katelyn glanced between them, her mouth falling open in a small “o.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize,” she said.

“Realize what?” Neil asked. Andrew snorted quietly and grabbed the whisky out of Aaron’s unresisting hand.

Katelyn cleared her throat. “That, uh, Aaron had a brother.”

Aaron watched as that bombshell spread over Neil’s face. “Wait…” He made a revolted noise. “You thought—what, you thought my soulmate was _Aaron?_ ”

“You never said he was your soulmate! I just saw him in passing! And why is that so terrible?” Katelyn asked, gesturing between Aaron and Andrew. “You’re literally living with his twin.”

Neil and Aaron looked at each other and both simultaneously retched. “He listens to all that emo crap,” Neil said indignantly.

“You listened to The Cure on repeat for three months. I was ready to go insane by proxy, I don’t know how Andrew coped.”

Andrew hid the twitch of lips that passed for his smile in a swig of directly from the bottle, then disappeared into the tiny kitchen to finish up with dinner.

It wasn’t until Aaron sat down that he realized Andrew had taken the whisky with him. Asshole. At least he made up for it with the food. Aaron had never quite figured out when Andrew had learned to do more than burn fish sticks in the toaster oven, but he wasn’t going to complain. Especially when he had been subsisting on crappy takeout and leftover pudding cups from the hospital cafeteria.

Somehow, they cobbled together a conversation between bites of enchiladas. It took Aaron until midway through Katelyn’s rant on racism in medicine to realize the evening was mostly Neil egging her on, aided and abetted by the glass of wine Andrew had foisted upon her. There was an amused gleam to Neil’s eyes as he glanced at Aaron, and it would’ve been tempting to punch him in the face if only Andrew wouldn’t kill him.

And if only Katelyn’s obvious brilliance didn’t make her even more appealing.

Aaron hadn’t realized how much she held back. Long ago he had learned there was an incisive brain behind the cheerleader facade; his secret obsession had started when she had sweetly ripped some condescending asshole to shreds in lab one day. But he nearly choked on his food when the thought struck him that he would willingly listen to her vent about inequality and bias for the rest of his life. If only he lived in an alternate reality where such a thing was possible.

“...and then that...that _guy_ , do you know what he did? He tried to claim we must be _soulmates_ , all while standing ten feet from where his wife was recovering from open-heart surgery. Even had the nerve to ask for my number, can you believe it?”

Aaron shook his head, his stomach rebelling against the idea of Katelyn having a soulmate. Obviously she must; she was perfect; and if broken people like him, or Andrew and Neil, could have soulmates, then certainly Katelyn should. But not some dickwad who hit on his wife’s doctor. Not when Aaron had been trying to work up the courage to ask for Katelyn’s number for eight years or something.

He blinked, and Andrew was looking at him, his mouth twisted in wry amusement as if he knew what Aaron was thinking. Aaron scratched his cheek in his brother’s direction, his middle finger on display, and Andrew snorted quietly into his whisky.

“Do you have a soulmate?” Neil asked with feigned innocence.

Katelyn shrugged. “I don’t know that I believe in all that. I mean, I get music in my head, yes. But I don’t know what that means, really. The studies about it have been inconclusive. Are people really happier with their so-called soulmates than with other partners? Are those who have soulmates more fulfilled than those who don’t?” She shrugged. “The science doesn’t really support it.”

Fuck, he loved it when she got all sciencey and authoritative. Would it be weird if he proposed before he’d ever asked her on a date? Oh, shit, she was looking at him and her mouth was forming words. “...do you think, Aaron?”

“I do.” A foot kicked him none too gently under the table, and he wasn’t sure if it was Andrew or Neil.

She blinked at him before breaking into laughter, her expression something he thought might be—fond? He could feel heat rising up his neck, and he gulped down some water to try to put out the forestfire of a blush that he knew would soon overwhelm his face.

“She was asking what you think about the pressure to find and commit to your soulmate being another way to manipulate and control marginalized people, dickwad,” Andrew muttered.

“Oh. Um, yes. Yes, I could see that,” Aaron babbled, with a panicked look between Neil and Andrew. Neither of them seemed perturbed by the insult to their bond; Neil looked intrigued by the possibility and Andrew just looked bored. That is to say, like Andrew.

“I’m sure it’s not always that, of course,” Katelyn said, nodding seriously “But if I had a dollar for every time some jerk tried to use my music taste to claim he must be my soulmate, I could take you out to dinner someplace nice. I mean, nicer than the hospital cafeteria, not that that’s saying a lot. What’s nice, anyway?”

“Italian?” Aaron suggested, because that was the only restaurant he had ever been in that actually used cloth napkins.

“Yes. Italian. We’ll do Italian the next night we both have off. Which, what day is it today?”

“Sunday,” Neil supplied, humor dancing in his eyes.

“Oh no.” She shook her head. “I have to work tomorrow, don’t I?”

“Yes you do.”

She gave a tiny, too-adorable sigh. “I shouldn’t have had that wine.”

“It was one drink,” Aaron said.

“I know,” she said, gazing mournfully into the depths of her empty glass. “One delicious, delicious drink.”

“Should I take you home?” Neil asked. “I can pick you up tomorrow on my way in.”

“I’ll do it!” Aaron blurted out with far too much enthusiasm. He cleared his throat and tried for casual. “I mean, you’re already home, and I live...not here.”

Andrew snorted, muttering, “Smooth,” in Aaron’s general direction.

“Ooh, yes,” Katelyn said, with the authoritative nod that had every nurse in the hospital running to do her bidding. “Thank you.” She then nearly knocked her chair over as she stood up. At least she could walk under her own steam.

Neil gave Aaron a sarcastic little wave from the window as he opened the car door for Katelyn. Andrew followed suit with that stupid salute he’d been doing since they were teenagers. Aaron wrestled down the temptation to flip him off and got into the driver’s seat with as much dignity as he could muster.

His playlist blared through the speakers when he turned the car on; he grimaced and turned it down with an apologetic glance at Katelyn. But she didn’t seem to mind the song that filled the little car; instead she glanced thoughtfully at the stereo display. He could feel her eyes on him as he backed carefully out of Andrew’s driveway and followed his phone’s instructions, but she was oddly quiet.

They were driving past the hospital when she broke the silence. “I know this song.” He glanced at her, and though she was staring out the window he could see the corner of her mouth quirk up, just a whisper of a smile. “I know all these songs.”

And then she looked at him as the song started to fade. “The next one is that one about souls.”

Sure enough, the first strains of The Killers filtered into the air between them just as his phone announced he had arrived at his destination. He swerved a bit too sharply to the curb and put the car in park. There was something buzzing, fizzing, exploding in his chest, and he couldn’t quite get it to organize into a coherent thought.

He settled for gaping like a fish in Katelyn’s direction. It was—impossible, wasn’t it? Or at least highly improbable, that he could be so fortunate.

Finally his voice surfaced, but before he could say anything her hand clapped over his mouth. “Don’t.” She shook her head at him. “Don’t say it. I don’t want to know if it’s true.”

“Why not?” he mumbled against her palm.

“Because I want to go out on a date with you. I want to see if it works between us. I want to go and eat my body weight in spaghetti and laugh with you and split a glass of wine and kiss you in the car and not have it be because of some stupid—some myth or construct or whatever about soulmates. I don’t want to feel obligated. And I don’t want you to either.”

She laughed then, just a breath infused with humor. “Is that uncouth of me?” He tried to answer but she shook her head. “You know what, I don’t even care. We’re going on a date, the rest of it be damned.”

When did a crush become more than a crush? Aaron thought it might have been then, that moment. With her hand warm against his lips and the righteous passion in her eyes and her complete and utter willingness to disregard convention and her use of the word uncouth when she was tipsy and all of it. Every last molecule of her was perfect, even the bits that weren’t.

“You’re not saying anything,” she said, her forehead crinkled. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

He gestured at the hand muffling him and she dropped it with a grimace. “So, uh. A date, yes?”

“A date. Yes.”

“With me.”

She hummed. “Looks that way.” There was something small and private and real about the smile playing on her lips, and he realized that he had never seen her look that way at anyone but him.

“Okay. Good. Right. A date.” He could feel his entire face burning. “Um, Thursday?”

“Thursday works.”

He probably looked like an idiot, with the goofy way he was grinning at her, but he couldn’t stop. Until—

“Motherfucker.”

“What? What is it?”

He could kick himself for putting that worry in her tone. “Fucking Neil. He knew. That bastard knew, and he’s never going to let me live it down. You have no idea the gloating I am in for.”

Katelyn laughed, and it was music and sunshine and he was so, so gone. “Well, I won’t tell him if you won’t.”


End file.
